Holder defends keeping Petraeus investigation from White House

By Lara Seligman

November 16, 2012

Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday defended the Justice Department’s decision to keep the investigation that led to former CIA Director David Petraeus’s resignation from the White House until after last week’s election, The Washington Post reported.

Holder said in a news conference in New Orleans that Justice saw no reason to advise officials outside the department before the investigation was complete because, “there was not a threat to national security.” The inquiry was handled “in an impartial way,” he emphasized.

“What we did was conduct the investigation in the way we normally conduct a criminal investigation,” Holder said. “We do not share outside the Justice Department, outside the FBI, the facts of ongoing investigations.”

The DOJ and the FBI have come under fire by critics who argue that the White House and congressional intelligence officials should have been informed of the investigation.

The CIA on Thursday opened an internal inquiry into Petraeus’s conduct during his 14-month tenure, bringing the number of active investigations into the scandal to three.